Snakes on a Plane. What Scares You?

What scares you? Seems we all like to be scared when it comes to entertainment.

As a kid I remember seeing Invaders from Mars. It’s the movie where the Martians steal away parents in the middle of the night only they come back as mind-controlled zombies. I had nightmares for months after that one.

Nevil Shute’s book and Stanley Kramer’s movie On the Beach terrified me. Can you blame me for being scared when the world ends from a nuclear holocaust? The final scene is one I can’t wipe from my memory. As a child growing up in the 50s and 60s I did take part in the duck and cover drills. And my mom worked for the Air Force at Maxwell Air Force Base, and I remember seeing an evacuation manual in the glove compartment of our Chevy. We really did think the Soviets were going to attack us from Cuba.

Before Stephen King skeered the bejesus out of me, Rosemary’s Baby had me turning pages late into the night. The Exorcist followed and finally I discovered Stephen King’s end-of-the-world battle of Good and Evil, The Stand.

Coming up this weekend is the release of the much-hyped movie Snakes on a Plane. I seriously want to see this movie, but these snakes are another matter. As Indiana Jones said in Raiders of the Lost Ark, “Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?”

Snakes on a Plane is being released August 18, 2006 to a huge clamoring fan base created mostly by Internet buzz. New Line Cinema (NLC) did the most unusual marketing move and allowed cafepress.com designers to become official licensees of SoaP merchandise. These designs are fan created and independent of the NLC created images.

No one, Samuel L. Jackson, to the contrary, thinks this is going to be a critically acclaimed movie. We just think it’s going to be scary and fun with the trills of a roller coaster ride. It’s an absurd idea. Or is it after last week’s liquids on a plane threat? Sam’s character, Nelville Flynn says, “You know all those security scenarios we ran? Well I'm smack in the middle of one we didn't think of.”